Dr Allison Gardner

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on digital identity, and in the past I have audited algorithms and processes that developed identification systems. With that in mind, I worry about a couple of issues. Before the Government announced their digital ID policy, 30% of people were in favour of digital identification, but that dropped, which is interesting. There has been an issue with scaremongering and arguing to extremes, particularly from the party that brought in voter ID when it was in government, which I find very interesting. I do, however, agree that it should not be mandatory, but we need to de-couple that argument from right-to-work checks in particular, as I remind Members that they are already mandatory. For a digital ID scheme to work, we need to have trust in it; we need to have control, and we need to have choice. I therefore ask that the scheme not be mandatory. People should have the choice of whether to use it or not. I believe that a well-designed system would offer benefits; people will see that for themselves, and they may then make their own choices. I agree with other Members on that.